Heart beat of an ancient faith
by georgiebunk29
Summary: Three important moments in Hermione's life. I was feeling sappy. So sue me.


**Heart beat of an ancient faith**

**Don't really know what happened. I was planning to have a night off writing. I typed up Bry's fanfic for her, and that got me all teary (because her writing's so beautifully, heartbreakingly tragic) and then I read her my latest chapter (VII) and she started bawling which made me feel pretty good and bad at the same time, then I had a drink while I watched Rockstar InXess and they sang all those amazing songs. Suffice to say, by that point I was a little emotional. I decided to sit down and twiddle at the key board and this appeared. Since I've written it I may as well put it up. Originally it was Draco/Hermione with Ron at the end, but I decided that it would be more fun to let you choose your favourite pairing. In fact, Ginny will fit just as well as Hermione if you'd prefer. Let me know if it's crap or OK. **

**Kuddos to J.K. for giving us characters to fall in love with.**

She and he lie under a tree in the midday heat. Sunlight blankets the summer land thick enough to wrap yourself in. Their bodies are dappled in shadows cast by the lightly shifting leaves above them, camouflaging their supple young forms in the barley stalks.

Hermione has her eyes closed, face pressed to his throat, feeling, hearing, his pulse beat inside her skin, knowing that hers echoes it as it slows and steadies. Her breast is against his, pressing his ring against her flesh, indenting it. His chest lifts and falls as he breathes slowly in and out under her. His mouth brushes against her forehead, tickling her sweaty brow. They stick together with perspiration, damp bodies glued. Their legs are tangled, caught in each other.

The taste of his kiss is in her mouth and his scent rises up and mixes with the smell of crushed grain in her nose, masculine and heavy, tinged with dirt and sweat. He smells of life and all that is precious to her in this moment.

Unable to move, lacking the energy even to think, she absorbs him in through her pores. Drinking him, wanting him, loving him so much she thinks her heart should shatter inside her breast, but it just keeps on beating, leisurely and constant as time.

* * *

Hermione falls under a tree, her limbs unable to hold her, her strings cut by the hand of fate. The summer afternoon sunlight glares down on the scene thick enough to choke on.

Under her hands, on the crushed barley stalks, he lies broken and damaged. His limbs are twisted, disjointed and mutant, they do not lie as nature intended. His clothes are slowly turning black- the darkness spreads across his shirt from one side of his chest to the other and down each side. She presses her palms to him, trying to hold the life inside him, unable to accept that he is already gone, knowing he will come back to her because of the strength of her love.

She can feel no movement beneath her, no rise and fall of his chest, her ear against his lips can hear no rasp, no stuttered pulse. The tang of blood invades her nostrils, rusty and elemental. She breathes in through her mouth, but the smell has grown so that she can taste it, she gags and bile fills her mouth, a bitter flavour that overcomes the other but is no more pleasant.

His eyes stare up at her, but she cannot find his soul; they are empty and already clouding. She screams his name, barely able to hear her own voice, it rings so far away. She grasps at him, tearing his shirt, pulling out the ring that lies on a chain against his neck, pressing it into her hand, squeezing until she feels the pain, feels it cut into her. Sharp, but not nearly as sharp as the knives that stab at her breast; she prays one of them will soon reach her heart, stop it thundering inside, stop it pounding out the moments that she inhabits this earth without him. Stop it so that she can go with him before it's too late and the world turns on its axis and carries her away from him.

* * *

Hermione stands under a tree in the deep warmth of a late summer evening, shadow stretching behind her, squinting her eyes to watch the sun set across the fields where the barley stands high and still in the sleepy air. The sky is a great vault of cobalt above her head, darkening as the light fades moment by moment. The first stars have begun to appear, specks of silver that look down from their immeasurable distance, separate from the emotions of the earth, eternal and unchanging.

Around her she can hear the birds chirping and the insects composing their last songs of the season, the rasp, rasp, rasp of the cicadas. In the distance, she can hear the happy cries of children at play in the grass. The barley releases a smell that makes her think of bounty and a good harvest, though the heavy air barely moves to carry the scent to her. In her mouth she can just taste the first tang of the frost that will descend with the night.

She lifts a hand and slips it into her collar, drawing forth a slender chain, at the end of which dangles a ring. She weighs it in her hand, slipping it on her finger, though it is too large, its burnished surface brushing against her skin, moving over the lines etched there.

Her husband's arms wrap around her and before she turns to press her mouth to his, she pauses to feel her heart beating inside her, smiling at its strength, marvelling that it has kept beating all these years, that never once has it stopped despite joy or pain.

But then, she supposes, as long as her heart keeps beating, some part of him will be with her.


End file.
